Lights Will Guide You Home
by Interludes
Summary: – and that's the one thing you want the most. Arthur/Hope one-shot. WINNER of Best Romance: The Madrigal Awards, round six; runner-up for People's Choice: Madrigals Prompt Challenge, round two


**A/N: **Here's to you, (pause) _whirlpool of dreams_! You are the . . . friend (like, what?) for me! #hilarious songs #and talking scallop shells #and adorable tiny children that sing #oh, inside jokes

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><p><strong>Lights Will Guide You Home<br>**(and i will try to fix you)_  
><em>

**01.**

You're young and naïve, and you're roaming in darkness, lost with no hope. Because when you look into your library, your life is a series of angsts and tragedies, and all you're thinking is _getawaygetaway_ as far and as fast as you can. But this is a town built up on top of endless lies, and there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to hide. So it's just you against your family, your so-called friends, and this crazy place of a vile town you call home.

;;

**02.**

There's no one to talk to here—no one that ever takes a second look like you have, anyway. Sometimes you just want to grab someone and shake them, shake them real hard, and ask them if they see it: if they can see what they're actually doing—their cruelty that's cloaked in kindness.

But they're _them_, and they don't see anything except for what they want to see.

If only they knew the things that were being fed to them.

;;

**03.**

Every child, trainee, _tool_, gets the—what was it called?—_honor_ of serving the superior ones.

But you know it's a lie.

Watching those ignorant fools, pathetic, to say the least (pick me! _pick me!_), and you can't help but smile a bit. Let them go. What does it matter to you? You've tried to warn them, but they only laughed. But still—soon, they'll be done.

The next time they laugh, it'll be too late.

;;

**04.**

When it's your turn, you're dead like the slab of meat you had for dinner last night. And you want to scream as loud as you can for the world to hear, but you can't. So you swallow your fears and worry, and go to the briefing—or, as you put it, the sentencing of your death, because you know it's too late.

Too late to run.

Too late to escape.

Too late to save yourself from the horrors that await you.

;;

**05.**

They send you to spy on an enemy—a Cahill, no less. All of a sudden, she pulls you down into her world—the world you were raised to stay away from—and you let her. Your first instinct is to run away from trouble, but she looks at you with her jade-green eyes (and _wow_, do you notice how they sparkle?), and you know she's got you held by a string. Because you'd do anything for her.

(you're just that desperate, aren't you?)

And as you're escaping together, you wonder if it was her fault for bringing you, or your fault for going with her.

But then again, do you really care?

;;

**06.**

You work for the Cahills now. Of course you do. Anything for that girl, that girl with the beautiful hair, that girl with the beautiful eyes. You do it for her. She gives you hope.

Hope.

It's the word that's always been in your mind lately, and it refuses to get out.

Hope.

Hope.

Because hope can be the light that guides you out of darkness.

That's the one thing you want, right?

;;

**07.**

They hate you now. Wish you didn't exist. Wish you were dead.

But you know what? She makes you happy, something they never did to you. And you don't really care anymore, because as long as you are together, as long as she is safe and alive and happy, you don't have anything else to care about in the world.

Not even them.

And you know at last that you've found the one thing you want; the one thing you need.

A place to belong.

Home.

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><p><strong>AN: **Arthur/Hope, as you may have noticed.

This was for the Madrigals Prompt Challenge. The prompt was light. (**Edit**: I won second place! Thank you so much to everyone who voted for this. Seriously, your support means the world to me!)

Title taken from Coldplay's song, _Fix You_.

The non-capitalization of the words in parenthesis is intentional.

Reviews are loved! And thanks for reading!

—interludes


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